The present invention relates in general to semiconductor device fabrication methods and resulting structures. More specifically, the present invention relates to fabrication methods and resulting structures for a semiconductor device having a dummy semiconductor fin removed from within an array of tight pitch semiconductor fins.
In contemporary semiconductor device fabrication processes, a large number of semiconductor devices, such as fin field effect transistors (finFETs), are fabricated in and on a single wafer. FinFETs employ semiconductor fins to introduce on-wafer topography. The semiconductor fins are often formed as an array of semiconductor fins having a periodicity, or fin pitch, to minimize etch bias due to pattern factor, i.e., the fraction of the area of the semiconductor fins within a unit area. In this case, some of the semiconductor fins need to be removed after formation of the array of semiconductor fins to provide isolated semiconductor fins or a cluster of semiconductor fins isolated from other clusters of semiconductor fins. The unwanted semiconductor fins are dummy fins.